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Debt recovery work on the rise, with 23.5% more money claims handled by the County Courts in 2015

Monday, 07 August 2017

Law firms in the UK could be heading for a debt recovery windfall as the volume of debt recovery work seems set for a major rise. Work on debt recovery, debt collection, repossessions and insolvency is all set for growth in the UK in the coming years. 2016 has already seen a significant acceleration in cases, with the number of County Court Judgements (up 22.7% to around 950,000), the number of High Court Enforcement Officer cleared writes (up 13% to almost 86,000 writs) and the number of insolvencies (personal and business up around 12%) indicating the scale of rising work. On top of this, it is worth noting that at the end of 2016, all financial companies in the UK held on their balance sheets non-performing loans and advances to the value of £72 billion and had almost £91 billion of loans and advances which are either not performing or in forbearance.

Rising consumer credit and business debt and a likely slowdown in UK economic growth, not to mention potential Brexit-inspired economic problems, point to debt recovery being a lucrative area of work for law firms in the UK in the coming years.

The future will offer opportunities to law firms which can tie up with major debt purchasing companies and which can offer one-stop-shop collection-to-recovery services. Investment in new technologies, such as predictive analytics, is likely to be a growing feature of the market as law firms aim to target their actions on those debtors most likely to pay, thereby reducing costs and improving their cost effectiveness.

These and other areas are covered in the IRN Research report, Debt-related Legal Services 2017 which provides an overview of the legal services related to debt recovery and debt collection. (see Table of Contents below)

The report (86pp, PDF), is available directly from IRN Research, priced at £180. UK sterling price is plus VAT so total price is £216.

IRN Research
Established in 1991, IRN Research is a market research consultancy with a particular focus on the legal services market. We offer a range of bespoke research services, on an ad-hoc and continuous basis, to law firms and suppliers to the sector.

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